Captive Surrender (3 page)

“
Because this
one is the closest to Dinnington, and it is away from the nosy
parkers in Marchwell. It has everything we need.” Levant seemed to
realise he had said far too much and closed his mouth with a snap.
He nudged his horse into a trot and left silence to descend over
the riders as they made their way out of the storm.

CHAPTER
TWO

“
It’s
alright, mother,” Prudence sighed. “Everything is going to be
alright. Just come with me,” she murmured softly as she turned her
mother around and led her back toward the house.

“
But they
have gone, you know, they have gone,” Agatha replied with a frown.
Her small frame trembled beneath the thin material of her white
nightdress. It was cold outside, but Agatha had not bothered to put
a shawl on before she had left the house to wander aimlessly around
the gardens.

Prudence shouldn’t be
surprised, really. It wasn’t the first time that she had found her
mother wandering around the house and grounds late at night, or
early in the morning. Usually, either she or her sisters made sure
that the doors were kept locked and bolted, but everyone must have
forgotten to slide the bolts across last night. How long Agatha had
been wandering around the gardens Prudence had no idea but, from
the sight of her mother’s muddy, and slightly blue feet, she had
been outside for some time.

“
I know that
they have gone, dearest, but we can find them in the morning. Right
now, it is too dark to see anything,” Prudence muttered and shared
a frustrated glance with Maggie, who appeared in the sitting room
doorway. “Go and fetch a bowl and some water, we need to get her
clean,” she sighed and eyed the muddy footprints they had left on
the tiled floor behind them.

She turned to Robbie. “Go
and fetch a stool.”

Within minutes, Robbie
was holding his mother’s hand and talking nonsensically to her
while Prudence and Maggie quickly washed the mud off their mother’s
feet.

“
We can’t
carry on like this indefinitely,” Maggie warned. Her chin wobbled
at the mumbled nonsense that their mother repeated over and
over.

Several years ago their
father had abandoned them in favour of a dissolute lifestyle in
London. He had taken with him what had been left of the family
coffers and spent the lot before his death. Unable to cope with the
scandal and shame, their mother’s health had declined at a steady
rate every day since, and she had descended into a state of madness
that now posed a significant risk to her life. Unfortunately, in
order to protect themselves and their home, Prudence and her
siblings had been left with no option but to fend for themselves
and care for their increasingly frail mother.

“
We have no
choice,” Prudence snapped as she pushed to her feet. “We will lose
the house if Uncle Bernard ever gets wind that she is like this.
She will be confined to heaven only knows where, and then what?”
She stopped as she realised her voice was getting louder and
louder, and immediately regretted her outburst. Nobody argued with
her though, because they knew she was right.

Uncle Bernard,
embarrassed by his younger brother’s abandonment of his family, had
offered Agatha a monthly stipend in return for her continued
silence on the matter so as not to bring the family name into
disrepute. Agatha, having been of sound mind at the time, and with
a family of six mouths to now feed and raise alone, had accepted
the rather meagre monthly allowance. Unfortunately, in doing so,
she had unwittingly forced the girls to do whatever they could to
help ease their troubled way through life. Prudence was fairly
certain that Bernard’s rather questionable generosity would not
extend to Agatha’s children if they ended up motherless too. If he
ever discovered that their mother was not of sound mind, he would
undoubtedly want her cast into the mad house and, as a result,
would take possession of the property and estates, which would
render Prudence and her siblings destitute and homeless, if not
pushed into unwanted marriages.

“
We agreed to
continue to care for her for as long as we have to. We need the
allowance,” Eloisa argued softly.

“
But we can
barely survive as it is,” Maggie protested. She placed her hands on
her hips in a stance of defiance that wasn’t lost on any of the
sisters, or Robbie. “We are having to do more and more just to keep
this house running, and that is before we even start to look at the
repairs that this place needs. What would we have done if Levant
had seen mother wandering around the gardens, rambling madness in
her nightgown? He would have had her confined and taken delight in
pestering us for this house even more than he already is. If he
ever finds out that the house belongs to Uncle Bernard, he would be
over there as fast as his horse could carry him and we all know
that Bernard would snap the man’s hand off just to get rid of
us.”

“
I know,”
Prudence sighed. “But what is the alternative? We cannot tell
anyone that she is like this. To do so would mean that
circumstances would be taken out of our control. We would end up in
the work house and then where would we be? We would never be able
to work our way out of there. There aren’t enough jobs around here
for the likes of us to be able to work, so we have no choice but to
continue to trade what we can grow and make.” She rounded on Robbie
and pointed one long finger at him. “You will not work at
Dinnington Hall, do you understand?”

Eloisa stood in the
library doorway, a look of sadness on her face that brought tears
to Prudence’s own eyes. Several months earlier, Eloisa and Prudence
had planned to look for work at Dinnington Hall, but that was
before Lord Dulwich had sold up and left. There were no other large
mansions in the area, and they couldn’t afford coach fares to take
them further afield in search of work. They were now well and truly
stuck.

“
I know that
we cannot continue like this indefinitely, but with Ludwig Levant
continuing to pester for the house, we must stick together,”
Prudence reasoned, unsure how many more ways she could phrase the
same thing.

“
But, why
don’t we sell him the beach and the lands? The money will enable us
to be able to life quite freely,” Georgiana’s voice trailed off
indecisively. “Well, for a while at least.”

“
Then what?
What do we do when we have to notify our solicitor that the house
and grounds are being broken up? The solicitor will tell Uncle
Bernard. What if the solicitor wants mother to go into his office
to sign any paperwork?” Prudence sighed and gave their mother a
worried glance. Given that she didn’t own the house, it wasn’t
likely that their mother would be required to do anything except
move out, but they couldn’t afford lodgings, even if they could get
Agatha to stay lucid enough to convince any landlord to rent to
them. “Look at her, she is hardly able to hold a quill, let alone
use one, even if she could remember her name.” Her voice quivered
at the last and she stopped to gather her shattered
emotions.

She could understand her
sibling’s worries because she had echoed them on more than one
occasion but, right now, she had no solution to the seemingly
insurmountable problems the family faced. The thought that they
might have to enter a work house filled her with horror. She had
briefly – and only briefly – considered Ludwig’s offer; both of
them, before she realised that she would rather prefer the work
house than allow that man anywhere near her, her family, or her
home.

“
I think that
we just have to keep mother confined to the house and hope that she
remains inside while Levant is in the area. If she does wander
outside, we will just have to tell people that she is battling a
fever, or something,” ever practical Eloisa sighed. “Until then, we
just have to carry on as we are, and pray for a
miracle.”

She motioned to Robbie to
help her and escorted her mother up the stairs. “I know that the
lights are gone now, but they will be back soon, I am sure of it,”
she sighed. “Come on now, maybe you can see them again from the
bedroom window.”

Prudence waited until
they had disappeared out of sight and turned to Maggie. “I am sorry
to be so snappy with you today. It is just that I don’t have any
answers right now. We have to carry on as we are and hope that
mother gets better eventually.”

“
Do you
really think that is going to happen?” Maggie asked doubtfully as
she moved to the sitting room. “She has got an awful lot worse over
the last few weeks.”

“
I know,
Maggie, but all we can do is hope and, like Eloisa says, pray for a
miracle.”

Maggie gave her an overly
bright smile. “Then that is what I shall do,” she replied firmly.
“On Sunday, I shall say an extra prayer for a miracle.”

“
We all
shall, Maggie, my dear,” Prudence sighed, hoping against hope that
just once, the good Lord would be kind to them. “We all
shall.”

Somehow though, she
rather doubted he would be.

Stephen stood in the
depths of the shadows, beneath the canopy of the small copse of
trees, and watched the door close to the large rambling manor
house. The old woman was undoubtedly Prudence’s mother, and had
unquestionably succumbed to madness.

Why he was there, he had
absolutely no idea. He had left Levant in the study at Dinnington
and, as per instruction, ensured that the grounds were secure, but
not before he had taken a slight detour to Cragdale.

The hearty glow within
the rooms bathed the occupants in a cosy light that made him feel
more cold and alone than ever. He had first spotted Agatha
wandering aimlessly amongst the neatly tended rows of vegetables
and flowers about an hour ago. She had muttered and mumbled,
stumbled and staggered her way in aimless circles for some
considerable time before Stephen had taken pity on the woman’s
sodden state of distress, and had thrown a small pebble at the
window to the room he knew was occupied. Sure enough, within
seconds, Prudence had rushed outside armed with a shawl, and had
gently guided her mother into the warmth of the house.

He had no idea how the
ladies managed to get away with their subterfuge, and he was fairly
certain that it was subterfuge. They were clearly trying to keep
their mother’s illness a secret from people, but why? Where were
the male relatives in the family? As far as Stephen knew, no
respectable male relative would ever allow such young ladies to
look after a woman who was suffering from madness. Did they not
know that Prudence and her sisters were running the house while
looking after their mentally deficient mother? Did they not care
that their relatives were almost destitute?

Although the house was
large and old, it was showing alarming signs of decay that warned
Stephen that money was simply not available for even the most minor
of repairs, or even smaller bits here and here that the ladies
could do with a little bit of time and patience, and not much
expense. Paint had already begun to peel and crumble; shutters were
broken and, on a couple of windows, were half hanging off. The
brassware on the front door had long since faded into a dullness
that was more in keeping with an empty home than a full and busy
one. The grounds that weren’t laid out to plots of vegetables, lay
weed tangled and unkempt. The beach was littered with flotsam and
jetsam, and the outbuildings that sat atop the cliffs were
ramshackle to say the very least, and had parts of the roof
completely missing. He couldn’t help but wonder what the inside of
the house was like.

He knew that the way the
family lived had absolutely nothing to do with him. If he was
honest, he couldn’t even begin to explain why he felt the need to
lurk in the bushes so close to her home, but he had. Now, he felt
slightly uncomfortable for having done so, but was driven by a
curiosity that went far deeper than he was happy with. He tried to
reason to himself that he had to know more about the family, the
house and the grounds in order to be able to ascertain why Levant
wanted the property, and the woman. What was it about them that
drew the man’s continued attention? The women were undoubtedly
beautiful, and would have benefitted from being part of the busy
London social scene rather than living out in the middle of nowhere
like they were, but were they worthy of the rather determined,
hideously vain attentions of Levant?

With a shake of his head,
Stephen caught sight of the woman who had plagued his thoughts
since he had left her digging her garden earlier that same day, and
knew that she was the reason that he had felt inexplicably drawn
back.

Prudence.

Even one fleeting glance
at her through the window was enough to bring about the same surge
of awareness he had felt the very first moment he had caught sight
of her. He shifted uncomfortably and felt the rough bite of the
bark against his back. A strong gust of wind snaked up his spine
and made him shiver, but he made no attempt to move.

From his vantage point,
he was hidden out of sight from the road, the house and the beach,
yet he had a clear view of all three. If he climbed through the
bramble hedge that lined the narrow lane that ran past the house,
and walked along the protection of the hedgerow toward the back of
the outbuildings, he could wander around the property completely
undetected. It was perfect for his purposes, but it also raised
alarm bells at just how easy it would be for anyone else to also
creep up to the house unnoticed. He was fairly innocuous, however
anyone with intent to cause damage to the property or its
occupants, could do so completely undetected.